SPAM ..... grrrrr......

Many people say e-mail spam is a bad thing. But I must disagree on some points.

Most spam sent out in the past had exceptionally bad grammer and spelling mistakes. Not to mention being completely intelligible. Lately though, the spam has been getting pretty good. Fewer spelling mistakes and the grammer is much better. So we are improving peoples spelling and grammer skills!

The spammers have also started using text from books and articles, so it can be quite entertaining to read about the "foxes that paw and are hungry". I feel sorry for these poor foxes.

Further more, I am now the leading expert on all the different types of sex drugs out there. Viagra, Cialis etc. I also know the normal going rate for these drugs on a per pill basis, and the best place to purchase them.

What about those Morgage (or home loans) special rates and all the financial institutions that want me to confirm my details. Expanding the banking market as well!

The sad side is, in the last year I have had no less than 31 Uncles, Aunts and close family die in Nigeria and leave me a wealth of money in oil, diamonds etc. Including the number of times I have won the UK, US lotto, I should have more money than Bill Gates multiplied by two.
I unfortunately didn't have the $30 000 required in legal fees to deposit into a Swiss bank account to get the process going.

Lately alot of women have been e-mailing me wanting a good shag. What about a couple of "virgins in my are that want me bad". What more can a man ask for?

Okay, all jokes aside, spam is a very real problem. Of late I have noticed that spammers are targeting particular companies with relevant spam. For example my support email is getting e-mails titled "I have problems with e-mail" or some other relevant subject. This is a problem, as I have to open the mail and read this crap to make sure it isn't spam.

Anyway, enough ranting..... until next time.

Ubuntu 6.10 "Edgy" on my Amilo L1310G

I've got a Fujitsu-Siemens Amilo L1310G lappie, and I've been looking for a version of Linux I can try on it. After searching many a website (mostly german ones...) I managed to find a couple of distributions to try out.

Ubuntu 6.10 "Edgy" seemed to be the choice.

I've worked with Linux for quite a while. I like to consider myself an expert on it, no guru, but I can hold my own. I build HA clusters for a living, go figure :)

Installing Ubuntu went perfectly. I shrunk down the windows partition on the drive (non-system drive) and made way for the new tenant. Ubuntu installed and booted up fine. I like the look of Ubuntu, very clean.

One of the priorities was to get the wireless working. The button that turns the wireless card on is software based, which is a big bummer when you move to linux. However, the ubuntu forums came to the rescue. http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=207428
The module took about 30 seconds to install. The wireless card came on, and presto.

Next problem is the fact that the standard gnome setup has a archaic network tool (don't get me wrong it's great at wired networks) for wireless out the box. It only supports WEP and Open networks. My wireless network is WPA.

Here's the site I found for WPA on debian. http://www.debianadmin.com/enable-wpa-wireless-access-point-in-ubuntu-linux.html

It's excellent. Debian Admin is a great site to dig around for info.

I got the WPA module working pretty quickly, scanned my wireless network and got the correct info.
When I attempted to install the snazzy gnome-network-manager, I hit a brick wall.
Whenever I installed a gnome addon, and rebooted, I would login and there after, no icons or menu's. Just an orange back ground with a white square in the left corner. Uninstalling the gnome-manager, brought the desktop back on reboot.

When I investigated it turned out, gnome wasn't to blame. There are extra packages that get installed. This is what messes everything up.

The root of the problem is actually the ATI X200 chipset on the lappie.
Bad drivers seem to cause problems with various things. The Flgrx kernal module (which is ATI/AMD's handiwork) disables USB ports shortly after booting up.

I tried to upgrade the module using the apt-get way and the manual download the ATI drivers way. Both modules (which are different versions, the Ubuntu one being older) caused the same orange background with a white square. Removing the module and using VESA default for X11 would bring the desktop back.

I eventually gave up, as I was spending far to much time trying to fix the problem. You can't get around bad binary drivers unfortunately.

Still, I like Ubuntu. I've always been a Redhat man, Fedora Core for a while, with Centos at my current job. However I've setup an Ubuntu server before, and it was very good.
Suse is still my number one desktop OS with Fedora Core in second place.

Anyway.... Keep well all! Time for another cup of coffee.